Ashtonator
Well-known member
Welcome home and glad to hear youre staying strong and positive brother!
Hope your surgery was smooth and successful!
Hope your surgery was smooth and successful!
Went to see Omar on the way home from Shannonville on Tuesday...
The surgery on his hip went well.. he's looking a bit better, but his face is still drawn and he's tired. Having the body trying to heal so many places at once must be incredibly taxing on the system.
Things are looking good for the missing bone in his leg - they have a synthetic bone in place right now for stabilization purposes. Apparently the body will build some sort of membrane around it given time. Once the membrane is solid enough, they can cut it open and fill it with the bone from other parts of his body. Pretty amazing stuff.
He will likely be moved from the Sunnybrook Trauma ward in the next couple of weeks into their rehab facility. It would be pointless to keep him in the trauma bed when he is stable, and they're waiting for the membrane etc to build and let his body heal a bit.
At least he's managed to keep his sense of humour... his Facebook status yesterday was "Suppositories and Explosive Bed Sh*ts. This is my day. #FTW"
That's about it for now.
Hello Everyone,
Update on Omar... he's been moved to a rehabilitation hospital, and is no longer in Sunnybrook. His right ankle is healing well, and he is to start applying some weight to it. His left arm is gaining a larger range of motion, and is relatively functional and showing great promise.
The area of concern is still his left leg. It's been stabilized and he's doing "dangles" several times a day to ensure that the stitches and blood flow all hold together. It's still missing 4" of bone in his thigh, but the doctors have put bone cement in place to keep it somewhat together, and assuming to prevent too much muscle contraction and shortening.
On the grim side of things, the funeral for Linda, his wife, is this Saturday.
Dunno if I should keep reviving this thread or not, but an update.
I was transferred to St. John's Rehab, where I'm focussing on rehabilitation for the foreseeable future. Right now I don't have a discharge date, but I'm hoping that will change with my next visit with my surgeons next week and the week after.
Healing is going well. My elbow (broken in 4 places, repaired with screws) is coming back well. I can weight bear on my forearm (I can lean on things) but I can't yet weight bear on my hand (pushing, pulling and gripping). I can bear weight on my right leg with a splint (broken ankle) which means I can transfer from bed to chair fairly independently. The skin grafting on my left leg is healing very, very well and is almost fully closed. I am working hard to gain flexibility in my left ankle, so that I can bear more and more weight on my left leg. I didn't think I would be able to bear weight on this leg because of the bone cement, but as it turns out there's also a rod spanning the gap where there's no bone yet, so it can take some weight.
When next I go to see orthopaedics, they're going to xray my right femur to verify that it's a candidate for a donor site for the bone graft when they go in and remove the cement and the rod and re-grow the bone to close the gap.
I recently was able to attend my wife's funeral service. I have no words for this piece of things.
I have good days and bad days. Overall my perspective is good. One of the benefits of being in a rehab facilities is that I get to meet a lot of people who have a lot of different injuries. Amputees, burn victims... seeing these guys and hearing their stories is inspirational and motivational and it keeps me going.
I have a ways to go still, and so I'll keep going.
O